First ever Philip Larkin poem to sell at auction, even though he forgot it existed

A handwritten poem by Philip Larkin, penned about “love” but forgotten just a few years later, has become the first ever to go up for auction, after he proclaimed it “rather good”.

First composed in December 1962, it was published by magazine Critical Quarterly  Photo: Getty Images

By Hannah Furness

The Telegraph 02 May 2013

The poem, entitled Love, is to be sold by Bonhams for an estimated £4,000 despite the author forgetting he had ever written it.

First composed in December 1962, it was published by magazine Critical Quarterly in 1966 and promptly fell out of popular circulation.

Larkin is now known to have written to the publications co-founder just three years later, admitting the composition had slipped his mind.

“A publisher wrote recently to ask if he could reprint a poem Love from Critical Quarterly,” he wrote. “I had forgotten writing such a poem, much less publishing it. I thought it rather good...”

The poem deals with the “compromises and demands of love” and, according to Bonhams, is the first ever handwritten work by Larkin to come up for auction. 


A spokesman for the auction house added:: “Handwritten poetic manuscripts by Larkin are exceedingly rare.”
The poem is now expected to fetch between £3,000 and £4,000, at the sale of the Roy Davids Collection Part III: Poetry: Poetical Manuscripts and Portraits of Poets on May 8.
The opening lines of the poem read: “The difficult part of love / Is being selfish enough, / Is having the blind persistence / To upset an existence / Just for your own sake...”
It is part of a collection by poet and scholar Roy Davids, built up over 40 years and considered the finest ever to come to auction